


I Called Your Name

by Samking



Series: In the Woods Somewhere [4]
Category: King Falls AM (Podcast)
Genre: Coming Out, Episode 49 but earlier, M/M, Shadowmaker - Freeform, The Shadows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-10
Updated: 2020-02-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 20:15:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22651618
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Samking/pseuds/Samking
Summary: Mayor Grisham runs an attack ad on the two year anniversary of Sammy's disappearance and Jack reveals everything. Part 4 of my Sammy-is-taken AU
Relationships: Sammy Stevens/Jack Wright
Series: In the Woods Somewhere [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1516955
Comments: 1
Kudos: 91





	I Called Your Name

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry it's been so long since I've posted. This one took me a bit to get to a point that I was satisfied with it. Also I needed time to recover from Episode 100. No major warnings except Grisham being his normal dickish self and some homophobic language- its not directed at anyone, Jack is merely recounting something once said to him.

Jack woke up, panting, immediately wide eyed. He could recall the dream he’d just had in vivid detail. He was in King Falls, in his apartment, going over his notes trying to decipher the code that Death by Damnation was written in when the Shadows began to fill his apartment. He could hear the laughter of the Shadowmaker, his raspy voice as he taunted Jack. _Jack be nimble, Jack be quick, Jack missed the candlestick. Can you hear him, he’s calling for you?_ And then there was Sammy Stevens, skinnier than Jack had ever seen him, with his blond hair pulled back in the messiest bun Jack had ever seen.

_Jack. Why Jack? Why haven’t you come for me?_

Jack tried to respond, to explain why he hadn’t been able to pull Sammy from the void yet despite being in King Falls for the past year and a half. Sammy would never forgive him if he saved him but sacrificed himself to be in the Void. Jack had thought about it, he’d thought about it so many times over the past year and a half. He had contemplated it last night just before bed, and nearly gotten in his car to drive to Perdition Woods. But he couldn’t, he had responsibilities here in King Falls, people who depended on him. He couldn’t be one more person who had disappeared in Ben’s life.

His alarm clock went off just then. It was midnight, time to get up. He had work in two hours. He sighed, he just wanted to wallow in his misery alone. But he couldn’t justify taking the night off. It was two years, he was trying his best. It just seemed most days that his best wasn’t good enough.

Jack forced himself out of bed, stuffing his feet in his checkered slippers so that his feet wouldn’t get cold while he walked across the cold kitchen floor when he made his coffee. They had been a gift from Sammy a couple of years back, he wondered if he had ever told him how much he loved these slippers? Another regret to add on to all the others.

He followed his routine by rote. Coffee, shower, get dressed, grab something quick out of the pantry to eat so he didn’t starve till breakfast in four hours, brush teeth and hair, find car keys. He did this most days, sometimes little things would interrupt his routine, an email on his phone, accidentally turning on the tv that silently most days, checking his twitter and seeing something that one of their followers had tweeted to him. Usually had something to do with raccoons. Ben really shouldn’t air his most hated animal over the airwaves like he had. It was only inviting the raccoon tweets. Today Jack followed his routine to a T.

Then he walked out to his car and looked back at the small house he rented here. It didn’t look like the small bungalow that he had shared with Sammy, but still he could see the shadows coming down off the roof and scooping up the unsuspecting Sammy. Jack shook his head, trying to shake that memory but it wouldn’t quite leave his mind, lingering and waiting for the moment when Jack had his guard down to decide to play on repeat.

* * *

The show was going well, true they were only about ten minutes into the night. “Sounds like we’ve got a great show tonight, on this crisp January night,” Jack said with a smile he didn’t feel at all. That didn’t matter so much, as long as their listeners still thought he was the same old chipper Jack Wright. “We’re going to cut to commercial real quick and then we’ll be taking your calls. Stay with us on 660 AM.”

Jack hit the button for the first queued up commercial as Ben tried to reach over fast enough to stop him. “No, not that one!” But Ben’s protest came too late and suddenly Mayor Grisham’s voice was filling Jack’s headset talking about him, talking about Sammy. And then suddenly Sammy’s voice was coming in through his headset, and not the best of Sammy either. Clips from some of the Shotgun Saturday Night episodes where Sammy was at his most vicious and crudest. But it was him, it was the first time Jack had heard his voice in a long time. Right after Sammy disappeared Jack would play a voice mail of Sammy saying I love you every night to try and help him fall asleep. He had accidentally deleted the voicemail a few nights before he came to King Falls.

“Like his own best friend has said, who is Jack Wright? And who is Sammy Stevens?” Grisham asked the town just as he finished up the commercial.

“I-I-” Jack stammered. He knew they were coming back on the air, that all of their listeners had just head the very worst of the man he loved. Had just had cast doubt on who Jack was.

“Dude, are you alright?” Ben asked reaching over from his chair to put his hand on Jack’s shoulder. “I know you don’t like to talk about him, and I wasn’t going to play the ad for that reason alone. But this Shotgun Sammy guy seems like a real dick-”

“It was an act,” Jack interrupted. “Sammy wasn’t like that in real life. He wasn’t like that to me. He’s a kind and gentle person, and-” Jack fiddled with the ring that he wore under his shirt. He’d been such an ass to Sammy those last few months, hadn’t listened to Sammy’s concerns that he was getting in too deep. Sammy had dragged him out of their home for Christmas, he wanted to go see the Christmas lights that were on display. Jack had fought him the entire time until they got there and the lights were beautiful. And then a week later, just a little over a week later, he was gone. Taken. Ripped from Jack. And it was his fault.

“I- I don’t understand,” Ben said. “Why did Sammy have to act like a dick? Why were you both there in the first place?”

“It’s a long story,” Jack said with a small smile as he thought back to another radio show he’d produced and been on in a very different place with two very different people, and at a very different time. “Ben, Sammy Stevens is my fiancé.” He heard Ben give out a soft surprised breath. “He acted like a complete dick over the radio so that no one knew he was gay. That he and his producer were together. They all just thought we were close roommates, because there was no way that homophobic, misogynistic Shotgun Sammy was an in the closet gay man.”

“You don’t- we don’t have to do this right now,” Ben protested. “I can put on best of and we can go have pancake puppies at Rose’s and talk there.”

“Yes, I do, I owe it to you Ben, and I owe it to King Falls to explain what they just heard,” Jack said stubbornly, that patent Jack Wright stubbornness that Sammy complained about. Once Jack had made a decision, he stuck to it, no matter what. And he had made a decision, about himself, about Sammy, and about what this town that had made him feel so welcome knew. He would never allow someone like Steven Grisham be able to use Sammy against him ever again.

Jack took a deep breath before he spoke again, it was time to tell Ben his story, their story. His and Sammy’s and he only really wanted to say it once. “I met Sammy in college. And we were best friends from the start. He’s super sassy but is also the person you can call at three in the morning after a breakup and he’ll come pick you up. He’s kind and he cares about people, he cares so much about people. So much. And he’s the best at keeping calm in a bad situation. I’ve always been really envious of that.

“But most importantly, to me anyways, Sammy is the love of my life.” Jack wrapped his fist tighter around the ring. “And he was taken from me, two years ago, today.”

“Jack,” Ben breathed, “You never said anything. You’ve been sitting there for the past six months while I’ve been looking for Emily and you said nothing.” His voice was ragged as he spoke, and Jack could see the hurt in Ben’s eyes. Why hadn’t Jack told him? He could see the question burning in Ben’s eyes.

“I didn’t want anyone to know. People, outside of Lily, didn’t know about us. It’s hard to be out gay men on the radio, and that bullshit that Grisham played for you was Sammy trying too hard to be something that he’s not. I mean he always tried to be someone else on the radio, even back when it was our show with Lily in Florida, but Shotgun Sammy was someone totally different.

“We wanted to get out of it. It was killing us to be that much in the closet, we’d talked about retiring. That we would do one more year of Saturday Nights, and then we’d wash our hands of it. We had the money we wanted, I wanted to do something smaller, maybe a podcast. Sammy doesn’t like podcasts thinks they’re inferior to radio, but I think they’re brilliant.” Jack made a half smile. “Either way we wanted out, and then I came across a book.”

“A book?” Ben asked hesitantly, Jack nodded.

He took another deep breath before he told the next part of his story. This wasn’t going to be easy to tell, but Ben needed to know, needed to understand what had truly brought Jack out to King Falls. “It talks about the Void, the Shadowmaker, the Devil’s Doorstep, and Perdition Woods. It’s a dangerous book, and there are people out there who do not like the fact that there are still five copies of this book out there. I began to dig deeper into King Falls after I read the book, find out more about the town it’s lore. I had always known about King Falls, its hard not to like the paranormal and not know about King Falls, but it suddenly became my obsession.

“I stopped functioning as a normal human being, I made Sammy worry. He was really worried about me, Ben. I found the pamphlets for the hospital after he disappeared.”

“Disappeared?” Ben asked his voice shaking slightly. “You were literal when you said taken.”

“Yes,” Jack replied amazed that his voice hadn’t started shaking yet. “They were after me.”

“Who was?”

“The Shadows. I was getting ready to go to King Falls; Sammy didn’t want me to go. He had begged me not to go. He worried that I wasn’t going to come back. He came out of our house when he heard me start the car. I didn’t want to get into another fight with him. And then they descended from the roof of our house, and I watched as they descended from the roof of our house and swallowed him up, taking him to the Void.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? I could have helped you.”

Jack couldn’t look Ben in the eyes as he spoke his next truth, the truth as he had seen it. “Ben, I couldn’t have been out, not in this town, at that time, when no one knew the truth. No one but Lily. This is such a small town, in Idaho no less. It doesn’t exactly scream open-minded and able to think rationally,” Jack pointed out.

“But you said you knew our lore, and, and-” Ben protested, Jack knew he was trying to defend his hometown. A place that he loved, and the community he had grown up in.

“Ben, trust me when I say that there’s a huge difference between accepting that there’s a lake monster in your town and finding out that your son is a homo who will get what’s coming with a slow and agonizing death,” Jack said. “I know now that King Falls is different, but when I first came here… it was better for me not to say anything at all.”

“Someone said that to you?” Ben asked, horrified.

“My mother did when I came out in high school.”

“That’s awful.” Jack knew Ben was imagining Betty saying such a thing. But not even Jack could imagine Ben’s saint of a mother saying such words. Betty was the kindest woman Jack knew. “I’m so sorry,” Ben apologized.

“It was nearly twenty years ago,” Jack tried to dismiss his feelings, like he did every time he thought about them.

“Still, no one should say such awful things. Especially not to their child,” Ben protested. Jack didn’t disagree with him, and he glanced down at the phone board which was all lit up from their ever-faithful audience. He cringed internally at what they might have to say about his story.

“Should we go to the phones? The board’s all lit up,” He asked wiping tears from his eyes he hadn’t realized were there until now.

“The callers can wait a few more moments. Jack, I- I want to help. You don’t have to do this by yourself anymore.”

“Do what?” Jack asked, genuinely confused by Ben’s statement.

“Look for Sammy, I want to help you find him.” Jack could have laughed at the earnestness in Ben’s voice as he spoke, but he didn’t. It was so like Ben to want to help everyone, even when he was still in the middle of trying to rescue his own love. What two peas in a pod they were.

“I know where he is Ben, he’s in Void with Debbie and the Shadowmaker. That’s not the issue, I came to King Falls knowing he was there.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“I can’t get him out.”

The rest of the night didn’t go terribly. A lot of callers were sympathetic to Jack and his story. They were a bit more confused about the Shadowmaker and how exactly Sammy had disappeared, even Ben couldn’t quite explain to them what had happened, and Jack had no desire to go into everything that was written in Death by Damnation, nor the other research he had done back before Sammy was taken. The research that had led him to the book. Ron Begley called, and Jack nearly teared up at his kind words of support and solidarity.

“Well folks, we only have about thirty minutes left, and I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to curl up in bed and sleep for the next week,” Jack said. He had no intention of going back to sleep any time soon but it was better to say than what he actually had planned.

“We’re going to do breakfast at Rose’s right?” Ben asked.

“Sorry about that, bud, but I’m gonna have to call a rain check. I have a standing date in a motel in Big Pines.”

“You’re going to see Lily?” Ben asked, cocking his head in confusion. “I thought you two didn’t talk about Sammy?”

“We don’t. She’s still never forgiven him for convincing me to leave Tampa,” Jack said. “But she also doesn’t want me to be alone today. It’s a sibling thing.”

“I guess so,” Ben chuckled. There were thing Sammy had never been able to understand about Jack and Lily’s relationship because of being an only child. Though no one would ever guess that Sammy and Lily weren’t related with the way they were at each other’s throats all the time.

“Did I ever tell you about the time she nearly defenestrated Sammy?” He asked, he wanted to tell a funny story about the three of them before they went off the air. Something to make the good listeners of King Falls feel better and know that Jack and Sammy had good times and it hadn’t been all sadness and being scared and in the closet.

“I don’t believe you have, but first we must pay some bills,” Ben said, pressing the button so they could cut to a commercial break. Ben removed his headphones and ran over to give Jack a hug which he had done every commercial break since Jack had told his story. He also had apologized numerous times, once for not pulling out Gresham’s ad, then for not asking Jack more about how he was doing because he had been so focused on Emily, and then another time for just what had happened in general with Sammy, and then there had been one more apology, but Jack had threatened Ben with pain and bodily harm if he apologized any more. He didn’t blame Ben for what happened. Jack could have just not said anything. He could have apologized to their listeners for what they had heard, thrown Sammy completely under the bus for their shock jock days. Or he could have given a half truth about who Sammy was to him, a best friend or something. But he had instead done what he had never been brave enough to do, he came out. And it had been easier before the phone calls came in when he could pretend that he had just come out to Ben, his best friend, but he was glad that everyone knew now. That there were no more secrets.

* * *

The drive to Big Pines Motel took about a half hour from the radio station, it likely wouldn’t have taken Jack as long if he hadn’t’ had to come down the mountain from the radio tower. “So,” Lily said, holding a bottle of wine in her hands, “you finally grew a pair.”

“Please tell me you have something stronger in that room than wine,” Jack begged, ignoring his sister’s jab.

“Of course I do, there’s a whole bottle of spiced rum on the nightstand with a little sticky note with your name on it.”

Jack thanked whatever deity might be listening that his sister remembered his taste in alcohol. “I have the book, shall we get cracking?” He pulled Death by Damnation out of his coat pocket along with his little blue notebook with everything that he had solved so far.

“You okay?” Lily asked sitting on the bed beside him as he opened up the rum and poured himself a glass.

“He was in my dreams last night.”

“The Shadowmaker or Sammy?”

“Both.”

Lily pulled the book from his hands, and placed it on the bed beside him before taking Jack’s hands into hers. “Stevens and I may have had our differences, but I love him too, Jack. And if you think there’s a chance he’s in this Devil’s Doorstep and we can bring him home, let’s take it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading everybody and once again sorry for the delay.


End file.
